Ten Days of Terror!: The Man They Could Not Hang

Film: The Man They Could Not Hang
Format: Internet video on Fire!

I am a horror fan, but I’m finding more and more that I’m shying away from things that are explicitly and gratuitously gory. I don’t mind gore when it makes sense in the narrative, but I don’t see the point of the fan service when it’s there just to be there. Because of this, there is a real comfort in horror films from the 1930s and ‘40s. The Man They Could Not Hang came out in the glorious film year of 1939, and it’s one of those films that is right in the wheelhouse of its star, Boris Karloff. There’s a menace here that works really well—remade today this would be a lot bloodier, but it’s a story that would work today.

Like many horror films of the time, The Man They Could Not Hang is rooted firmly in the idea of the progress of medicine and medical experimentation. Dr. Henryk Savaard (Karloff) has experimented with the idea of bringing the dead back to life. He’s gotten a young medical student name Bob Roberts (Stanley Brown) to be his test subject—he’ll be temporarily killed and kept alive with an artificial heart. The idea is that this would allow doctors to perform procedures impossible on living patients, and then allow those patients to be revived.

Ten Days of Terror!: Doctor X

Film: Doctor X
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

Sometimes I go into movies knowing nothing about what I’m going to see and what I get is almost beyond description. Doctor X has so many odd things about it that feel like they can’t really be a part of a movie. For instance, this is a film from 1932, and the studio created both color and black-and-white prints; color for the big markets, black-and-white for the small towns (I watched the color version). It’s very clearly a pre-Code film since cannibalism, murder, and hints of prostitution are points of the plot. It also features the wildly under-used Fay Wray in a negligee.

Another odd bit about Doctor X is the name. There actually is a “Doctor X” in the film, and if you thought that he was going to be the bad guy, you’ve been misled. That would be a common assumption—there’s a bunch of films named after the villain and far fewer named after a character who is only kind of the main good guy and kind of the main character. There’s weird science, a weirder monster, a nosy reporter, and did I mention Fay Wray in a nightie?

Ten Days of Terror!: The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog (1927)

Film: The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

Every great career starts somewhere. In the case of Alfred Hitchcock, his directorial career started with a couple of romances. He really came into his own with The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog (hereafter referred to as simply The Lodger), the first of his movies to take a deep dive into suspense. The Lodger is a silent, but even here there are the clear beginnings in what would eventually be many of Hitchcock’s signature themes and ideas—mistaken identity, murder, and obsession with blondes, just for starters.

The Lodger is very clearly a riff on Jack the Ripper, as is evident from the opening scene when a young woman is murdered. As we will discover, the young woman is the seventh victim of a serial killer known as “The Avenger” based on a calling card the murderer leaves at the scene of the crime. The killer acts every Tuesday night, and only kills young, blonde women.

Ten Days of Terror!: Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett)

Film: Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett)
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on various players.

I seem unable to get away from horror anthologies. Waxworks, or Das Wachsfigurenkabinett if you like the German, is potentially the first horror film anthology in existence, but I’m not as versed on silent film history as I should be to be able to make that as a definitive claim. In truth, since this isn’t really that scary and only one of the three stories is overtly horror, it’s possible that someone might claim a later film as having that title. Regardless, there are certainly some clear sense that this has at least horror intentions. It might be better thought of as a prototype rather than the real thing.

The framing story is, unsurprisingly, going to take place in a wax museum. The proprietor of a wax museum (John Gottowt) and his daughter Eva (Olga Belajeff) put out an ad for a writer. It’s answered by a man called only “The Poet” (William Dieterle), who is engaged to write backstories for three of the museums exhibits: Harun Al-Rashid, Ivan the Terrible, and Spring-Heeled Jack, the silent version of Jack The Ripper, renamed to avoid problems with the censors. The Poet notices that the figure of Harun Al-Rashid is missing an arm, and this is the entry point for the first tale.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Children (2008)

Film: The Children (2008)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

A lot of horror movies get a lot of traction from murderous little kids. This can range from the camp (Bloody Birthday) to the alien (Village of the Damned) to the demonic (The Omen). Years ago, Bravo ran a special about the 100 scariest moments in horror movies. In the section on The Others, John Landis commented that filmmakers always use British kids to be creepy. Well, we’re going to get murderous British kids in the 2008 version of The Children. I mean, it’s right there in the name.

Naturally, we’re going to be isolated. A group of friends and their kids have gotten together for a New Year’s Eve party in the middle of nowhere. Arriving at the start of the film are Elaine (Eva Birthistle), her husband Jonah (Stephen Campbell Moore), their children Miranda and Paulie (Eva Sayer and William Howes), and Elaine’s teenaged daughter from a previous relationship, Casey (Hannah Tointon). Casey doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t feel connected to anyone there really. She is very clearly set up as our final girl in the opening moments of the film. The people they are visiting are Elaine’s sister Chloe (Rachel Shelley), her husband Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield), and their children Leah and Nicky (Rafiella Brookes and Jake Hathaway).

Ten Days of Terror!: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Film: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on various players

There are a few movies that I think are litmus tests in the sense that if you don’t like them, there’s either something fundamentally wrong with you, or you are dedicated to being a contrarian for the attention. One such movie is the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors, by far the more famous of the two versions of this story. The original, a weird little Roger Corman project, is entertaining for what it is, but the Frank Oz version from 1986 is the film adaptation of the off-Broadway stage production based on the original movie. If you can’t find something to like in this, you should probably contact a therapist.

I don’t say that lightly. While Little Shop of Horrors isn’t going to be everyone’s favorite movie, I find it difficult to believe that there are people who could watch this and not find themselves entertained by it. The characters are fun, the premise is a great one, and the songs are, to quote the kids of today, bangers.

Ten Days of Terror!: Leprechaun

Film: Leprechaun
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

You watch a lot of movies, you end up watching a lot of stupid movies. That’s going to be true for each genre, but probably the most when it comes to comedies and horror movies. It’s been some time since I’ve seen anything as embarrassingly dumb as Leprechaun. Known these days at least in part for being one of the first starring roles for Jennifer Aniston, and specifically Jennifer Aniston pre-nose job (to be fair, it was done for medical reasons), there honestly aren’t a ton of reasons to watch it.

It's kind of a shame, too, because there are real horror movies that could be made about the fae that could be absolutely terrifying. Even the “good” fae creatures are often uncaring and capricious, and according to the folklore, the nasty ones are truly horrifying. What we get instead of that is Warwick Davis in heavy make-up riding on a tricycle. And somehow, there’s a Leprechaun 2 and 3, Leprechaun in Space, two Leprechaun in the Hood movies, a reboot, and another sequel.